Name: But What If We're Wrong?
Rating: 3.840909090909091 (44 reviews)
ISBN: 9781445663395

Chuck Klosterman

What if everything we are most certain about turns out to be totally wrong?

But What If We're Wrong?

But What If We're Wrong? visualizes the contemporary world as it will appear to those who'll perceive it as the distant past. Chuck Klosterman asks questions that are profound in their simplicity: How certain are we about our understanding of gravity? How certain are we about our understanding of time? What will be the defining memory of rock music, five hundred years from today? How seriously should we view the content of our dreams? How seriously should we view the content of television? Are all sports destined for extinction? Is it possible that the greatest artist of our era is currently unknown (or--weirder still--widely known, but entirely disrespected)? Is it possible that we "overrate" democracy? And perhaps most disturbing, is it possible that we've reached the end of knowledge? Kinetically slingshotting through a broad spectrum of objective and subjective problems, But What If We're Wrong? is built on interviews with a variety of creative thinkers--George Saunders, David Byrne, Jonathan Lethem, Kathryn Schulz, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Greene, Junot Díaz, Amanda Petrusich, Ryan Adams, Nick Bostrom, Dan Carlin, and Richard Linklater, among others--interwoven with the type of high-wire humor and nontraditional analysis only Klosterman would dare to attempt. It's a seemingly impossible achievement: a book about the things we cannot know, explained as if we did. It's about how we live now, once "now" has become "then."

Thinking about the Present as If it Were the Past

But what If We're Wrong?

Greg Talbot

In what may be regardeded as a legendary film podcast, the Filmspotting crew, along with Chuck Klosterman, celebrating their 600th episode (<a target="_blank" href="http://www.filmspotting.net/reviews/1525-600-top-5-movies-future-historians-will-remember-w-chuck-klosterman.html" rel="nofollow noopener">http://www.filmspotting.net/reviews/1...</a>), discussed what future film historians will look at as the high achivements of film. This is long after my lifetime, or the lifetime of film, when movies like Citizen Kane, Vertigo, and the Godfather will no longer be looked as the pinnacles of society. What will be remembered? What certainty do we have about making future predictions passed on the past? Klosterman's book is so refreshing because it seriously investigates predicting the future with humor, wonder, frustration and the type of high-minded zaniness we can only expect from C.K. There we so many big revels in the book, that made me think about the limitations of my own understanding of the world. Primarily we think about a future world as an extension of our one. However, we reappraise the past. A politicians sloganeering is pinned up against their videotaped words from 20 years ago, and surprise, surprise, we alter our present understanding, we affirm a perspective of the past, and forge a new future. Predicting gay marriage or marijuana legalization some 5-10 years as currently the law of the land would have been a stretch. Klosterman's predictions: the elimination of football as a national past time, the death of rock and roll, and predicting that the Matrix will be seen as a movie about transgender issues...are fascinating because while they are not obvious predictions. They are reasons for cultural trends for these to occur. Klostemerman's reasoning is thought-provoking, well considered, and not full of hubris. Truly an enjoyable, exciting read!! Listening to this as an audiobook was incredibly appropriate. Very hapand py on a personal note to make this my first audiobook. Swimming around to the ideas, rather than moving linaerly through them feels a lot like the endless time span we experience when go online to revist Mozart recordings, read about Columbus's 1492 expeditition or go to a museum to learn about the civil war. In short, it was a very profoundly enjoyable listen.

Patrick Book

Every time I read a Klosterman book I wonder why he spends such an inordinate amount of time trying to find importance in the ephemeral. Turns out that's not ALL he spends his time on. After reading so many of his other books this was a real treat. Existentially head-spinning, yes, at times, but I love seeing him focus on big ideas and big concepts.

A. D. Knapp

Liked this quite a bit. Walked the line between being a thought-provoking book and a breezy read in a way that makes me a little uncomfortable that I actually got much out of it that will endure, but it felt pretty good going down.

Mariane Ferrantino 

I like Klosterman best when he is making me thing harder about pop culture. This was more than that, and he made me think so hard, my head was spinning by the end of the first chapter, but it was a good kind of spinning? This was definitely more a 3.5 out of 5. Dense, but enjoyable!

Michael Stuckey

A book about questions, but specifically about questioning things. I like this book because it reinforces my need to seek truth and look for all angles. I disagree with certain aspects, but that's kind of the point. Being able to see another side and consider it as an outcome.

"But What If We're Wrong? visualizes the contemporary world as it will appear to those who'll perceive it as the distant past"--

Max Bodach

very witty, somewhat overwrought premise, but all in all a very good frame for questioning one's own bias

Sloan, Kara

Fun read, fun exploration of a single idea across multiple disciplines. But that's all I can really say about it. Not much to remember or really talk about. Just some brain candy fun. Which is needed from time to time :)

Zoe Smolen

As a hardcore Chuck Klosterman fan, I may be a little biased. However, this is not my favorite book that he's ever written. While I immensely enjoyed the theme of the book, I did find it a little hard to digest at points, and took me about two weeks to finish - quite a long time for me to spend on a book. Part of what is difficult is how dense it is, and the fact that it is philosophically driven. But on the flip side, this is also what makes the book so enjoyable. I found myself constantly bringing up the book in conversation and can see myself buying or lending people a copy so that we can discuss the theories presented. 

I agree that it is not Klosterman's most accessible book, but I do think it is a fun pop-philosophy read. 

Thanks to Penguin for an advanced readers copy.

Jason 

meh. I only got about half way through before I got tired of it. Just didn't find it all that compelling. I get the basic premise, thru the lens of history.. basically nothing matters after we are dead and decades pass and people forget what we liked. Cool. Now I'm depressed.

But What If We're Wrong?

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